Hello. I am making the 50 dollar robot boar right now. When I first started making it. My dad was trying to show me how to weld and did the part where you add the very first thing and weld it. Well instead of welding each when seperately he accidently smudged them all together so now that I am at the part where I connect the yellow were I can not see which part to put the wire to because everything is soldered over. If I just guess about where it is will it still work or is the project already totally ruined . Please help me out. Thanks.

Anyway, some of the parts are supposed to be soldered together. If you click on the some of the images on the page, it'll link to an image that's color-coded and tells you which should be soldered together.

If all the parts are soldered together into a big blob, then probably the electronics won't work, but the project is not ruined! You can either use a different part of the board and redo the soldering, or you can clean up the parts that were soldered together wrongly, using a solder wick, or a solder sucker. See http://www.geocities.com/mistertippy/howto/desolder.html for some instructions on desoldering if you need to

Good luck! My guess is that only a few parts may have gotten soldered together wrongly, so separating them shouldn't be too bad..

It wont let me add my picture. IT says the max size is 450kb.What do I do?

lol you used myspace (btw the link is broken) . . .just load your image into photoediting software and shrink the image, save as .jpg, etc.your image is just too big

Quote

is it ok that the cap on the new one is much bigger than teh old one, but still is 220uf

The capacitor shouldnt be much lower than 220uF, but otherwise just about any value will work fine. Physical size is usually means the voltage it can handle. The cap should be rated at some voltage (written on the cap or in a datasheet), a number that should be about 2x the voltage your circuit will use.

For example, the $50 robot uses about 6V, so the cap needs to be rated around 12V or above. Anything higher will be ok.

Admin. You saw the pic. right? Should I tear the whole thing apart or does it look ok? My problem is I think I soldered the very first thing to add wrong. Tell me if anything in the pic looks wrong or if I should keep going.

I think a lot of you are learning skills I didnt even teach in my tutorial, such as how to solder . . . a few of you expressed difficulties . . .

To be honest I was really bad at it too when I first started - those darn three pin transistors were especially challenging . . . and mostly fried after I was through with them . . . haha . . .

So you should probably just solder suck up the entire thing to salvage the parts then start over. Be careful not to overheat anything or you could risk damaging the components. Or you could just buy new components since it wont cost more than I think $25 including shipping/handling.

Quote

I was asking cause i have some huge 160v 100uf ones form an old tv I took apart and wanted to use them on a servo exersicer.

Do you know what size of soldering tip you are using cause it looks like its either way to big or you used way too much solder. Just a few tips: don't stick the tip onto the part and push solder into it to get a lot on, rather "tin" the tip (cover the tip of the iron with just enough to have an even thin layer on the tip) and solder with that, you are much less likelire to get "blobs" everywhere.

Brandon121233, I used to use that method myself but rarely use it now.

The best method I have found is to heat up your part real fast, then push solder into the part. If your part is hot enough, the solder will melt right away into a good bond. I rarely ever touch the solder to the soldering iron.

Melting the solder onto the soldering iron only works well if you use separate flux - sometimes when I only have two hands and I need three, I will do that, but I brush on liquid flux first to both the part and the pad.

If you're using flux core solder, once you melt it onto the tip, the flux is basically gone - you only get the benefits of flux core if you solder the way Admin suggests.

This might be a crazy idea...and perhaps a little messy, but it's worked great for me for quick desoldering for both pin and surface mount applications. A CO2 bike pump, used in conjunction with a "pump needle" for pumping basketballs and such with the tip cut off so the air goes straight, and cheap CO2 cartrages sold for paintball guns at Walmart (1/4 the price of the ones for the bike pump it self, but made to the same specs) Its a bit messy, watch for solder splatter, but when used with a soldering iron, it sure is a quick way to remove a lot of solder. An afterwards you can use it to pump up that football and play a game outside. Or turn it upsidedown and freeze and ant with dry-ice

I agree, heat it all up and try to fling off as much as you can. That solder sucker is for small joints, so work off what you can easily, then suck off the rest. Or there is wire you can get made off copper, that when heated ontop of the solder, it will suck it all up into it. That's a crapload of solder though.

After you get out the parts, you might want to start over. That's pretty hectic. Looks like your dad was watching television or something while soldering it

A little practice before hand will make everything pretty. Try getting a few parts that are dead or something and practice. That little bit will pay off in the end.